Former Pepsico boss Otsuki starts new job with cure for baldness

Talk about lucky, the newly-appointed boss of Japan’s Unihair, former PepsiCo Japan boss Tadao Otsuki, has announced that his company has discovered a cell generation method of growing new hair.

As Unihair is the world’s largest wigmaker this is a pretty useful addition to its offer.

And the former soft drinks ace is planning to bring some marketing nous to his recent discovery (and indeed his old wigs).

“I want to bring some of the perspectives of the consumer goods industry into the hair loss sector,” says Otsuki, who has a fine head of hair himself.

The new treatment for baldness stems from US research into cell generation and Unihair reckons it can increase sales from their current level of around $700m to $2bn in a few years. This is clearly just what the hair doctor ordered and will help the company overcome its reliance on wigs which are losing popularity among Japanese men who increasingly prefer to go bald rather than wear a rug.

The fortunate Mr Otsuki, who took control of Unihair (formerly known as Aderans) following a fight among shareholders, may be too modest with his estimates of sales growth.